Da Capo al Coda
by Fyrefly
Summary: At the end of the song, we return to the beginning, and stop at the final chord. How Graverobber became Graverobber, and Amber Sweet became Amber Sweet. NOT GR/AS. Dark.


**Title: Da Capo al Coda**

**Summary: At the end of the song, we return to the beginning, and stop at the final chord. How Graverobber became Graverobber, and Amber Sweet became Amber Sweet. NOT GR/AS. Dark.**

**Rating: M for sex, drugs, rock & roll. Also, some language. And violence. And dead bodies.**

**xxxxx**

**It's Been a Long Time Since Anyone's Seen the Sun: A Brief Interlude**

It's been a long time since anyone's seen the sun.

But sometimes, when he sleeps, Graverobber remembers the evidence of it:

light caught and trapped in a glittering net of hair. Between breaths, he murmurs a word that sounds like it:

_Dawn. _

**xxxxx**

**The Overture: First Sunrise**

_She was playing on the street corner: a rarity these days. Usually, women at intersections were only peddling one thing. But the electric guitar cradled her hip—or was cradled by it—and it shone bright blue in the dark shadows. _

_She caught the eye—and the creds—perhaps because she was so unexpected. A bright stream of music shimmered in the air, a melody Blind Mag might sing along to. The girl's hair was shining and yellow—unrealistically so, in a city famous for its grime and dust. It was by far one of the best dye-jobs he'd ever seen. _

And pretty, too, _he thought. Wide eyes, like the city lights in darkness. She had a look of innocence about her. It would appeal to some folk, he supposed: a risky—but effective—marketing strategy._

_From the doorway of the pub across the street, he listened, and he watched her little pile of cash and coin as it grew. Creds meant spending—preferably spending on his product. So when it was late, and the streets were clearing, he loped toward her in the shadows. She didn't seem to hear him coming, and he dipped his head to look at her with hooded eyes. _

"_Buy you a drink?"he asked. He made his voice a caress. If she could seduce creds from patrons with wide eyes and a bright smile, he decided, then he could easily seduce them from her with sensuousness and a hint of dark promise._

_He had expected to startle her: after all, she gave no sign that she'd noticed his approach. But he _hadn't _startled her; at least, it didn't seem so. She looked up at him at her leisure, her mouth quirking as she took him in: his long dark hair, his pallor and gleaming eyes. _

"_What do you hope to get for it?" she asked after a moment, and her voice sounded like laughter._

_Her frankness caught him off-guard, but then he smiled: slowly, silkenly. "I have product," he offered seductively, and swept back the side of his long coat to allow her a glimpse of the Zydrate gun at his hip._

_Now her eyes sparkled, and for a moment, he thought he had her. He was only a small-time peddler, selling the Z he bought from big merchants, and every sale counted._

_But then she said, "What am I going to do with that?" and she sounded so amused that it gave him pause. It was different than the mocking tone with which he was familiar; it sounded almost like genuine delight, as though everything was some kind of wonderful joke and she was pleased to play along. _

"_It's Zydrate," he said slowly, curious now at her reticence. "Some find it helps take away from the…residual pain of surgery."_

_She was positively glowing. The brightness of her smile almost made him take a step backward, but he caught himself in time. "I know what it _is,"_ she said, and laughed. "But I don't need it."_

_He paused, gathered his wits, and let his eyes wander in a slow perusal of her body. "Your surgeries _are _flawless," he agreed, and she laughed again. "They managed to keep the after-effects minimal?"_

_She was wiping mirthful tears from her face now, using the back of one fine-boned wrist._

"_I'm sorry," she said, though she didn't sound like it. "I'm real."_

_He stared at her for a moment, uncomprehending—_What does that mean?—_and she held out a hand to him. He took it without thinking, and was startled by its warmth._

"_Dawn," she introduced herself. "Dawn Sparrow."_

_He paused, and then said, "Call me Dealer. You're—"_

"_A virgin in terms of physical alteration," she said mildly, and now he could see it: the softness around her hips and abdomen and thighs, the fact that her nose was just a little larger than ideal. It all came together in such a perfect image of artistry, however, that he wasn't sure he believed that it wasn't manufactured. He'd never met an untouched woman before. Men, surely, were more common, but even though he himself had never been under the knife, he'd certainly changed his hair color a couple dozen times. Then of course, there was the make-up, the tattoos. _

_And suddenly, he thought, _Forget the Zydrate. _There were plenty of others who would buy the drug._

_For now, he was focused on the taunting novelty of real flesh, real breasts, real skin and hair and lips against his own in bed._

**xxxxx**

**Three Tips for Successful Grave-Robbing**

It's not something he figures out right away. He's not the type to just quit or give up on anything, but forcing his way through every day trying to pretend he's the same person he's always been—it's a strain.

Because he's not the same person. Before, he'd never cared. He'd known that the world and the people in it were as inauthentic as their manufactured bodies. Reality was measured in creds and sex and snide clever remarks.

He won't say that Dawn was _better,_ but she was cleaner, brighter than the rest of the world he lives in. The only thing he's ever known that is so sharp and scintillating is the blade of a scalpel.

_Tip One: Shelve your compassion, your concern, your pity. These are dead things; their hearts have long gone cold. Desecration is meaningless; steal from them in order that they may contribute to the world one last time._

He is no longer dealing; instead he is roaming the streets, dark-eyed and tight-lipped. He briefly debates becoming a dealer in prostitutes, rather than Z, but nothing appeals to him anymore except, perhaps, rum and whiskey. And then, on the smoke in the pub, on the street, he hears it whispered: _Amber Largo—so many surgeries—changing her name; a _sweet _face—addicted—_

And his brain lights up, a scintillating array of ideas going on and off in his head.

_Tip Two: Wear dark clothing. Lift from the knees. Be quick. Run fast. Confidence is Key._

He selects his first target carefully. A new grave in St Agatha's churchyard. His long coat hides a number of syringes and knives and chisels. He sweeps in with the dusk, bold-as-you-please. The best way to hide somewhere is to look like you belong there. He whistles a jaunty tune while he works, and imagines it can be interpreted as a "fuck-you" to Geneco police, to Genforcers, to the Largos, to the newly-named Amber Sweet.

He strides directly to the new vault, pulls back the lid. He hasn't learned proper lifting mechanics yet; he can feel some muscle inside him tear. Still, he moves quickly, efficiently: singing now, and smiling while he does it. The blade tears through the plastic wrapping around the corpse. The syringe is inserted smoothly into one nostril; for a moment he thinks of Dawn, but it doesn't stop him. There is blue light, purple shadows. He hoists the body on one shoulder and his torn muscle protests.

And he leaves.

It is simple. In future excavations, there will be more trouble—times when he is almost-caught, when he doesn't get what he came for, when he ends up with sprained ankles and bruised ribs, grazed by bullets—but this first time, as in many others, it's easy.

He's harvested five vials of the stuff from the current corpse, but it's not enough. He wants to have a solid, steady supply before he begins his one-man show. Before he approaches Amber.

_Tip Three: Crush the competition._

He builds himself a consumer base first. Initially, he focuses on the same clients he'd had when he'd been just a dealer, but there's something almost tender in him when he looks at them now. No, no: don't misunderstand. He's still just using them. But the money isn't the goal anymore, and he feels almost—_almost—_sorry for them when he thinks about what they are, and what he's going to do to Amber. The addicts from across the city come to him now, with Hail Marys in their mouths and pleading on their faces. His price, after all, is so much lower than anyone else's, and they love him for it, would give him anything he asked. Creds, sex, adoration. It's no longer _just _the drug they want anymore: it's him, too, a savior with long dark hair, slow smiles, and eyes that are so cold they burn. Suddenly, Zydrate is more than just a market to him. It's a mercy.

And a curse.

His former suppliers are not pleased. He is unsurprised when they send strongarms to menace him. The problem is dispatched quickly and easily, however. He hasn't lasted so long on the streets by being weak and unimaginative . One night, two weeks later, he visits them one by one and doses them with their own Z. Three men die; one dealer comes off her high with parts of her memory destroyed—she no longer remembers how to chew her food, and she will likely be addicted forever—and only one makes it through without too many adverse side effects (tremors in the extremities, difficulty swallowing).

They won't be bothering him anymore.

**xxxxx**

**Nocturne**

"_Since I won't buy your…merchandise…perhaps I_ _should buy your drink," she said._

_He cast her a sideways glance, shielding his surprise with a calculated look of slyness. In the pub, the light was like syrup through the smoke. With the abundance of Geneco's synthetic lungs and larynxes on the market, tobacco was growing more and more prevalent—but the woman named Dawn glowed in the soupy, half-gray clouds._

_At the bar, she peeled back fingerless gloves and shelled away her dark coat, and he was left schooling his face into impassivity in the shadows. He'd expected something risky in leatherette, as was the common trend, or velvet in crimson or plum. No—it was a confection of ivory satin and lace, just barely clinging to her curves, a style that was a century-old at least. _

Charming, _he thought, and was startled to find he meant it. It didn't surprise him that in the grime and dust, other men's eyes were drawn to her like Polaris. She shone, and he suddenly realized how _clean _she was. He rubbed his own thumbs and forefingers together, marveling at the sudden tightening in his abdomen. He had never been the type to experience self-consciousness before, but after a moment he recognized the feeling. Not that he was _dirty, _per se—he was fairly certain he smelled good, and he was vain enough to use the cold, trickling shower in his abandoned building at least once a day. But the cosmetics that covered his skin were thick—powder and grease—and he felt sometimes like it collected the smog of the city. He would have to wash his hands before he touched her, so he could feel her without the layer of wax and dust between their skins._

"_Miss Sparrow," the bartender greeted, with a dark glance in Dealer's direction. "Your usual?"_

"_Please," she responded, "and whatever my friend wants."_

"_Whiskey," Dealer said, his eyes flicking over the bottles, and the bartender glowered. It made him grin against his better judgment._

"_How's the songwriting coming, Miss Sparrow?"_

"_Oh, you know," she said evasively, smiling. The bartender flushed a little, and Dealer took a moment to soak it in. Her smile was bright and intensely personal, a gift from her for the bartender alone. An answering—and much less innocent—grin spread over Dealer's face, slow and sly. He wondered if he could make her smile like that while she was on her back. Most women, in his experience, did not smile during sex unless it was a vindictive, competitive tightening at the corners of their mouths, or a baring of teeth. _

_The novelty she represented—well, it was growing on him._

"_It's going fine," she continued. "Just waiting to be discovered on a streetcorner," she added dryly, and she laughed at the ridiculousness of such a dream, and the bartender looked like he would wrap himself up in the sound of it if he could. _

"_Don't worry, kid," the man said gruffly. "You keep writing your operas, and one day you'll be playing your guitar"—he pronounced it _gittar_—"right on stage with Blind Mag."_

_She grinned. "Ah, the opera," she said airily, and turned her grin on Dealer as though she were sharing some secret joke with him. Though he'd just been thinking about that smile, it came unexpectedly now, and he almost rocked back on his heels. "Maybe someday," she said. "We can hope. Isn't that how all great operas start out?"_

"_On streetcorners?" Dealer asked wryly, ignoring the bartender's sharp glance. _

_She grinned, and leaned closed, and he stilled when her breath puffed against his jaw, clean and clear. _

"_On hope," she said._

**xxxxx**

**I've Touched Too Many Corpses to Believe that You're Alive**

When he slides through her window on silent feet, like a cat, and pads closer to the bed where she sleeps, he is shocked. Not because of the mitten-like bandages winding all the way up past her elbows. Not because of the patches over her eyes, or the bruises which leak out the sides like purple ink—but because her face is _Dawn's._ He would know the line of that jaw anywhere—he'd traced it with his fingers, his lecherous tongue. For a moment, his mouth is thick with guilt: that he had never been slower, gentler, lighter. His teasing, unlike hers, had more often taken the form of mockery and slow, sensual satire; his smile had _always _been the smile of a man with some dark and secret source of amusement. He'd never—

But perhaps this is his chance. In the darkness, his fingers reach out of their own accord. He watches, eyes narrow and mouth grim, as they stretch achingly toward the face that is as familiar as his own: the pouting lip, the high cheekbone, even the delicate mole on her left cheek.

His fingers, perhaps, had intended to stroke, but the moment he feels the flesh he wheels backward, shuddering. She may look like Dawn, but she doesn't _feel _like Dawn—she feels like death. She's so _cold: _too many hidden scars, too little blood circulation, too many layers of manufactured flesh. She feels like the dead bodies he finds in the mausoleums.

Dawn always felt like coming home.

Amber is struggling to sit up, now, in spite of her aches and bruises, inspite of the bandages that glove her hands into shapeless masses. She's blinder than him, patches over her eyes, and he wonders with a sickening lurch in his gut if her eyes will be shaped like Dawn's, will even be that _color,_ like dark stars drowning in the bottom of a well.

"Who's there?" she asks sharply. He stills in the shadows, strains his ears.

"Who's there?" she demands again, and this time—because he's listening for it—he hears the note of panic underlying her diamond-hard voice. It gives him pause, reminds him of who he is.

A slow, sardonic smile spreads over his face, and aloud he purrs, _"Well."_

A wealth of meaning in that word, and now Amber Sweet is propped against her headboard, her head jerking futilely as she tries to find him without the aid of her eyes. "Well what?" she snarls at last, and he delights in the trace of fear in her tone.

"It would appear," he muses aloud, to no-one in particular, "that Miss Amber Sweet _is _addicted to the knife."

"Addicted to the knife?" she sneers, and her mouth is full of ridicule.

It doesn't deter him though. He's amused now, in exactly the way Dawn always accused him of being: a man with a secret, dark and more than a little malicious. "And addicted to the knife, perhaps she needs a little help with the agony?"

There's a pause now, and his grin grows slowly wider. He can almost hear her thinking. He moves closer, his mouth near her ear now. Their close proximity, as she stills—sensing him, perhaps—disgusts him and fills him with a deep, dark kind of meanness. It pleases him. His tongue tastes like acid when he whispers, "Help comes in the form of a little glass vial in a gun pressed against her anatomy…"

She turns her head so fast that they almost knocked faces; luckily, he's quicker. It's a graceless move: his sudden jerk backward, his pinwheeling arms. Luckily for him, she can't see it. "You have Zydrate?"she asks, her voice startled, but not quite needy.

_Yet._

He steps back into the shadows, even though she's blind. He doesn't answer, and after a moment, she says, "The doctors won't give me anymore. But it's not enough. I can still feel—" she breaks off, shudders.

He wants to ask, _Feel what? _He wonders if it's post-operational pain, or maybe something a little deeper under her skin.

He knows what she's doing, though. She's clever, trying to appeal to his sense of compassion. She's a strange mix: she's dead and alive, all at once—inhuman in her passionate selfishness. The Z will silence her severed nerves, numb out the pain—and maybe the guilt, too. The Z will be her suicide, till she's killed herself so much that she needs it in order to feel alive.

It's kind of delicious, really.

He pulls out the vial, allowing it to clink against the gun as he slides it in. She sucks in a breath, and he knows she recognizes the sound.

He steps closer. "What will you give me for it?" he asks.

"Give you?"

"Don't you know?" he says. "Nothing's free."

She licks her lips—Dawn's lips. "I have money," she starts, and he grins before almost lunging over the bed, caging her in. He's not touching her, but he knows she can feel his presence there—it's in the way she stiffens beneath him, like a corpse.

He can't _wait _to bring her low.

He's got the gun wedged between her thighs. It won't help her through the blankets, but she knows it's there: cool glass and the spark of relief, only millimeters away.

"Try again," he rumbles darkly, amused. He's full of contempt, and at the same time, he's a little afraid to touch her again—her face like Dawn's, only dead.

_Dawn is dead, too. _

She hesitates only for a moment. "You want…sex?"

He hadn't thought she'd come to that conclusion so quickly. The idea's not without its merits—he would be lying if he said he wasn't attracted to her, even before she stole Dawn's face. But it's a perverse sort of fascination, the kind where he's not sure if the tightening in his balls means a coming hard-on or a wave of nausea.

He can tell she's not sold on it—not yet. She sounds doubtful, and disdainful at the same time. As if hre body is worth more than the drug. He doesn't want her disdainful. He wants her with no pride left.

Oh well. There's only one way to get her there, and he's a pretty patient guy.

"Maybe someday," he murmurs, his breath stirring the hair she's dyed in an attempt to capture Dawn's sunlight-look.

And suddenly he's away, the Zydrate gun withdrawn, and she's pulling her knees up to her chest, scowling. But then she feels the tip of the gun at the hollow of her throat, smooth and cool, like a ballpoint pen—only bigger—and before she can tell him to _fuck off, _ he says, "I want your _life."_

The gun goes off. The hollow of her throat lights up, blue in the darkness, and Amber Sweet's body arches in the throes of an orgasm. Her legs buckle and lock, then thrash. Her throat is a white line of delicate bones and inner workings, and she tosses her head from side to side. Her toes curl. In the bandage-mittens, perhaps her fingers curl as well.

He watches in a kind of wondrous, revolted satisfaction.

And then he turns, because his job here is done. He'll come back, a week from now when the pain of her healing body has reached another peak. He'll give her the drug, again and again, for free—until she's begging for it. He'll never withhold it, he'll never deny her. He knows this, and it gives him a strange, sweet, sick sort of pleasure.

Soon she won't have anything other than Zydrate.

As he reaches for the window, she calls out, her voice whispery with the kind of sleepiness that comes after sex. "I don't even know you."

He turns slowly. "You don't recognize me?"

It is, perhaps, a stupid question. Clearly, she does not. But he'd thought, perhaps, with her wearing Dawn's face, that she would remember.

But then, when has Amber Sweet ever looked beyond herself?

"Of course not," she responds with a derisive sniff. Even weak-kneed and sweating, she manages to sound haughty and arrogant.

If there was any chance he might have pity on her, it's fading fast. Quietly, coldly, he asks, "How did you choose this face? This _name?_"

She is silent, and he realizes after a moment that she doesn't remember. His stomach tightens, and his signature smile spreads, but there's no mirth in it. He looks at her, a cadaver on a slab, cold to the touch, made of dead skin and plastic. He thinks of what he's doing, stealing away the last few fragments of her autonomy, of what makes her a real person—of what makes her alive. She's just another dead body in a mausoleum, and he's just doing what he does best.

He smiles again, slowly, and his teeth gleam in the dim shadows and dust. He's sick at heart, and he hates her, and he's pleased, too.

"Call me Graverobber," he says.

**xxxxx**

**Dawn's Adagio**

"_Let me walk you home," he said as they left the pub, and she laughed._

"_You've had more to drink than me," she informed him. "Perhaps I should walk _you _home."_

_He smiled slowly, a picture of complete control. "You're welcome to," he told her silkily, and she stilled. For a long moment, there was no sound but the soles of their boots on the crackling pavement, and the muted bellows and clangs of the city. _

"_I should tell you," she said after a moment. "I am not going to sleep with you tonight." For a moment she was silent, and then added, "I wasn't trying to tease."_

_He'd suspected as much, somewhere between his second and third drink. Her words, the way she looked at him: they weren't the gestures of a woman who was trying to entice. She had moved and spoken the way a guileless girl might with an old friend. Still, he'd held out hope that she simply wasn't well-versed in seduction. It was disappointing nevertheless. _

_He put on his most innocent face, an expression so obviously manufactured that Dawn only stared at him in bafflement. "I beg your pardon," he said, sounding offended. "I had no intentions of sleeping with you." A pause. Embarrassment shone high in her cheeks, and a kind of amused self-deprecation. "At least, not till morning," he added after a moment._

_She laughed then, and delight shone in her eyes. "You have a sly sense of humor, sir," she said, and she looked pleased by it. He'd given up, then—she was a sweetly-packaged bundle of warmth, perhaps, but she wouldn't be spilled out in a tangle of limbs over his bed anytime soon. It was the truth, and Dealer was not the type to pursue things that would give him no reward._

_He hadn't anticipated that he would stumble across her again a few days later, and that her smile would welcome him. Or a third time, though by then he thought, perhaps, he had sought her out without realizing it. Their run-ins became as commonplace in the city as surgery, and infinitely more welcome. A couple scant weeks later, struck by fever and ill, he spent his morning boiling water to fill his cracked porcelain bath with something other than the cold trickle of his shower. And so it was like this—submerged to his chin, devoid of cosmetics, dark hair drifting in eddies around him that echoed the swirls and spikes of his dark tattoos—that she found him when she knocked._

"_Come in," he'd said, expecting one of the women he'd recently laid, or perhaps the shady landlord. And she did come in, and her arms were laden with breakfast things he hadn't seen in years: muffins with some sort of fruit in them, pastries, fresh oranges still attached to a slender branch with greenery. His eyes widened at the sight of black-market food, and he'd taken a moment to wonder about her resources._

"_Oh," she said, her eyes widening over the orange-tree branch. "This is a bad time, I think. You just seemed so unwell last night, I had thought—"_

"_The time is fine," he said smoothly, though he wished he'd had his make-up on, and that he wasn't chilled and flushed from fever and hot water. Still, he smiled at her from hooded, gleaming eyes. She kept her gaze on his face, though it would have been easy and more than a little tempting to let her eyes linger on the still water, and what lay beneath. _

"_Is it?" she said dryly, and raised a brow. She was smiling, though, the corners of her mouth twitching as she turned away to pour her presents on the table._

_He pushed himself up on the back of the tub, till the water lapped around his chest instead of his chin. "You could join me," he offered, his voice silky._

_She did laugh then, shrugging out of her coat and toeing off her boots, which were loose and unlaced. Her feet were bare underneath, and each toenail was painted a different, bright color. He watched, shielding the surprise from his eyes when she approached the tub and leaned down to feel the water. It was still hot enough to be pleasant, and she eyed him thoughtfully, though he didn't notice her gaze. His own attention was focused on the loose neckline of the white blouse she wore, silk and something sheer. Once, when he'd been a child, he'd gone with his parents to a place in the mountains, one of the last remaining places on earth where the air was still crystalline-sharp. Later, the resort had been purchased and upgraded till only people like the Largos could afford it. But now, the scent of it came back, like coming home. _

_Leaning over him, Dawn Sparrow smelled like a memory._

_She stepped into the tub then, and he turned his startled stare to her face as she lowered herself into the tub opposite him. Displaced water poured over the edges; the whispery blouse floated a little, suddenly translucent. He changed his mind abruptly; he was suddenly glad that he was clean, devoid of his usual powder and grease. When he touched her, it would be skin against skin, and all the reality he needed._

"_I take it you're feeling better then," she said dryly, her dark eyes bright with amusement. _

_He hadn't been—the fever had stayed with him all night, and he'd felt weak and flushed all morning—but suddenly, now, he felt more awake than he had in months. He leaned toward her. She was sitting cross-legged, and his hand reached out, tracing the inseam of her dark jeans under the water. _

"_These pants will be difficult for you to get out of," he said in lieu of an answer. His fingers crept up to her beltloop, then the smooth skin that swelled only slightly over the edge of the synthetic denim. It took effort to lower his eyelids but not let them close in something like ecstasy. Her skin was soft to the touch, heated through, supple. He traced her abdomen and its slight convexity, gently kneading the real, unaltered flesh there. His hand moved higher, and he watched her eyes, but she only met his gaze squarely._

"_What makes you think they're coming off?" she asked sweetly, but her eyes were bright, and she leaned into his hand when it found her breast. He was startled by the softness of it, like a dove; the weight of it in his hand, the softness of her nipple. When he thumbed it gently, it swelled to his touch, responsive and electric and alive. Her skin warmed wherever his fingers met it. He thought briefly of other breasts, which always seemed harder, firmer, the nipples already prominent and rubbery, and immediately decided that other breasts simply weren't worth thinking about at all. _

_He glanced down, at his hand on her skin, clearly visible beneath the gently-waving glasslike transparency of her blouse. Then he looked back up into her eyes. "I think so because you don't play games," he said. He didn't _know _her, after all, but he knew this much. What had she said that first night? _I didn't mean to tease, _she'd apologized, but she'd never led him on in the first place—not really._

_And now, in response to his certainty, she smiled—and it still was not the smile of a woman who meant to entice. But then, it more than enticed him anyway. It was not a calculated expression of seduction: instead, it was a joyful-hello, a welcome-home, a please-let-me-share-with-you. _

_He reached for the nape of her neck, the clean bright hair at the back of her head, and he pulled her toward him in the bath. Water splashed over the sides of the tub, and Dawn Sparrow laughed._

**xxxxx**

**One More Hit of the Glow**

It turns out he doesn't have to wait. Three days later, he stumbles across her in an alley and tries not to look surprised. She'd flanked by four men, each in various states of undress, and he circles her warily. It's not the bodyguards that make him uncomfortable; it's _her, _standing there, a piece of petrified wood with Dawn's face. He takes comfort in the fact that, although her eyes _are _the same shape and color, they're nothing like his girl's—Dawn's eyes were full of warmth and light, inviting you in. Amber Sweet's eyes are nothing but a warning.

"What's this?" he asks, nodding at her ripplingly-muscled lackeys. They're almost a joke: a caricature of manhood, sculpted by surgery and suction. The punchline is that Graverobber kind of doubts any of them have ever _really _even gotten in a fight before, but he's not sure he's willing to take that risk yet. Regardless, she's good at covering her discomfort; he'll give her that.

"Last time I was alone," she says smoothly, taking in his raised eyebrow, "an arrogant drugdealer assaulted me."

_Drugdealer? _He mouths the word in exaggerated horror. "What is the world coming to?" he asks seriously, but that sly smile is curling his mouth.

She rolls her eyes, then screws up her flawless face as though she's tasted something sour. "I want more," she tells him.

The smile broadens. "You _need _more," he corrects in a deceptively gentle tone.

"Shut _up,"_ she snarls, and the words themselves are a step closer to surrender. His grin only grows more infuriating, and she clenches her hands—still slightly swollen—in fury.

Finally, in genuine curiosity, he asks, "How many surgeries did you have at once? You shouldn't need a fix this soon."

She scowls. "Eleven," she says at last, reluctantly, and his eyebrows rise of their own accord. Eleven—he thinks that is the highest number of simultaneous elective operations he's ever heard of. He wonders if she counted her eyes and hands as two apiece, or if there were really nine other places on her body that had just been surgically reconstructed.

She's not entirely hooked—not yet—but he's eager to see how far he can press his advantage. "What will you give me for it?" he asks again, so lightly she might make the mistake of thinking he's being playful.

She pauses, and then steps forward—bravely, he admits grudgingly. Or perhaps just like a woman who has nothing to lose.

Her mouth is a whisper away from his own before he even realizes it, and he has to force himself not to recoil. Instead, he looks down at her lips—shaped like Dawn's, but _so cold_—and he wonders what it would be like to lick them, to bite them. He wonders if they would taste like rubber and wax.

"What do you want?" she asks after a moment, and her voice is husky now.

He grins, in spite of the fact that his blood is heating up with anger, yes, and lust, _yes, _and also that sickly-flushed feeling you get right before you vomit. "I think I already answered that," he chides, but his hand goes to his hip, where the little metal gun is strapped, and the leather case with five shiny vials.

"You can't have my life," she purrs, advancing. "I won't be your—slave, or whatever it is you have in mind." He plays along, backing up till his back is pressed against the alley wall. "But I can give you something almost as good," she says, and her voice is throaty and low.

He chuckles, and the sound is dark. "So soon?"

She tilts her head. "You're not unattractive," she says mildly, _reasonably, _and it makes his smile grow. If she's already rationalizing…

His hand snakes down and he cups the back of her thigh, drawing it upward, till the gun is lodged sweetly behind the curve of her knee. "What will you give me?" he asks again. "Will you crawl on your knees?"

Her distaste shows on her face—on Dawn's face—and she'd try to pull away if he didn't have her calf locked tightly against his hipbone.

He leans in, breathes deeply. She smells like leather and plastic and nicotine. The scent has a bracing effect on him, and his smile grows meaner. "Will you lick my boots?" he says, and there's no mistaking the sensual quality of his question. Still, she's in control of herself enough to think it's beneath her—the Geneco Princess, kneeling at some Z-peddling graverobber's dusty combat boots? Unlikely.

"Let me go," she says coldly. "If you're not willing to take what I'm willing to give, then we have no further business."

He laughs, then, long and loud and bold. With both hands raised in mock surrender, he drops her leg, and she marches away from him in clacking stilettos.

"Wait, wait," he says, between chuckles, and then he's swept up behind her, one strong forearm locked along her sternum, between her breasts. "I'll give you what you want." Before she or her bodyguards can move, the gun has connected with the sweet spot at the small of her back; the spark has flared and she's arching against him, writhing, and he can smell the dye in her hair as the blond strands caress the hollow of his throat. He holds her, a hundred thoughts and feelings awash in him: pleasure, and lust, and contempt, and cynical amusement. And a grim kind of satisfaction.

And pure, salt-soaked hatred.

The bodyguards want to rush him, but he's still holding her against him, feeling the aftershocks ricochet through her body. He wonders if her bones, at least, are still hers. As the tremors begin to fade, he releases his grip, and she slithers down to his feet in a pile of weakness.

He likes her there.

For a moment, he watches her, even as the bodyguardfs push past him to kneel at their mistress's side. As he turns away, he hears her voice: breathless and shaking, genuine for perhaps the first time in her life. "Why do you hate me?" she asks, the words shuddering their way out of her mouth as her bodyguards try to lift her boneless body. He is surprised at her perception, and pleased by it.

But he doesn't answer.

**xxxxx**

**Verismo**

_It was longer than a month, less than a year. It was a result of several small and stupid things, a twist of circumstance, of moments strung together so perfectly and so tragically it left him cold. The sheer precision of it all: it was like surgery._

_An open-air café, full of smoke and grit and coffee grounds. A bullet. A musician and a Z-dealer: one who dreamed of electric-guitar arias, and the other who dreamed of sunshine and real skin. A _venti_ Irish coffee, piping hot. A crumpled bit of sidewalk, like old newspaper. The three youngest Largos, sipping rum-drenched lattes. A barista._

_All these things were unrelated—until they collided. It went like this:_

_The two lovers intersected with the Largos at the café. The barista's foot connected with the sidewalk. The _venti _soared from her hands; it struck Amber Largo squarely, exploding against her chest and throat. The Geneco heiress said nothing; she didn't scream or cry out, though her skin was red in patches, white in others. _

_Only, she turned her head and looked about her coldly, and in that look was condemnation. This expression was enough for Luigi, who lunged to his feet, gun-hand wild. The barista stumbled back, even as the dealer and the musician unknowingly stepped forward. The bullet burst forth, and something wet and red pattered like rain against the dealer's cheek. He turned, startled, and the musician was looking up at him with wide eyes._

"_Your face," she said, and reached for him, but her hand never touched his skin._

_He caught her as she fell. She laughed and said, "How mundane," but her voice was reed-thin and whispery, and her limbs were like the broken branches of an orange-tree on a breakfast-table, folded in on themselves. He was dimly aware of Amber Largo, snapping her fingers, and her brother coming to heel like a well-trained dog. _

"_Dawn?" he asked, and was too stunned to be frightened, too stunned to even hear the shock in his voice, so uncharacteristic of him. _

"_You," she said, and her smile quavered at the corners of her mouth. Her lips moved, but he couldn't hear; he leaned closer with his fingers threaded through the sunshine of her hair. The back of her skull felt fragile against his palm. "It was too quick, wasn't it?" she breathed, and her ribs buckled with a sharp, pained gasp. He shushed her, his other hand moving over her face, pressing to the wound in her belly. He didn't feel the blood, but he could feel the heat, like a brand. It scalded him. "I would have liked—more time with you," she said, and her eyes flickered backward in her head before focusing once more. "Too quick," she mused again. "Will you forget me?"_

"_Sh," he said again, though he was desperate to hear her._

"_You," she repeated, and smiled—but it wavered—and then her mouth moved but he couldn't hear the words, couldn't make out the whispery paleness of them._

"_Dawn," he said, "Don't—" He could hear her breathing, rattling noisily in her chest; he could hear Amber Largo say, "Idiots," though he did not know if she was talking about her brothers, or baristas, or electric guitarists who got in the way. He heard someone yell to call the hospital, to call the police, but it was pointless—the police belonged to the Largos, after all, and in the overcrowded streets, ambulances couldn't possibly come fast enough._

"_I want her."_

_The heiress's voice cut through the haze, but Dealer didn't look up. _

"_It's a shame—a tragic loss," the woman said, though her voice made a lie of it. "But it needn't be wasted. She can donate her body, for medical Zydrate and—" she paused, and when she spoke again, her voice was no longer quite so cold, but intrigued, and wondering, and gently covetous. "And she has a _sweet_ face," she said at last._

_He did turn then, though he couldn't have foreseen what her words meant; he held her gaze with his own cold and cynical eyes, and he thought, _Dawn isn't even dead yet._ But then, this was Amber Largo, the Geneco princess, ever aware of her public image. Under her careful words and reptilian eyes, this moment would become an opportunity._

_And so, unbidden, the sneer he was so famous for—the slow sly smile that could pull in any woman except Dawn, who'd somehow seen something else behind or around or beneath the smile—began slowly curling one corner of his mouth: derisive, mocking, sensual._

"_Don't," he said aloud, and his smile was a death's-head warning. "You could never be—"_

_Then Luigi moved quickly, so quickly, and the butt of the gun crashed against Dealer's temple. As he fell, his mouth came down on Dawn's collarbone, and he felt her pulse in the hollow of her throat._

_And he felt when it stopped._

**xxxxx**

**Sometimes I Wonder Why I Ever Got In**

It's a long process, but it works. Eventually, she's willing to do whatever he requests, if only for a taste of the Zydrate. And he doesn't ask for much—not really, when all is said and done. The idea of riding her is enough to make the bile rise in his throat, even if it makes other things rise too. He doesn't ask for much, but what he does ask for is destroying her: because he makes her admit, every time, that she'll do anything for a fix.

She doesn't look like Dawn anymore. Piece by piece, she'd gone from being Amber Largo to Amber Sweet (_she has such a _sweet_ face, after all_), and Amber Sweet to a plastic doll that her own father doesn't even recognize. And now she's someone else entirely, and she still smells like rubber and nicotine, and powder and cosmetics and dye.

And he still hates her. Oh, how he hates her.

Sometimes, in the aftermath of her high, she tells him secrets as though they really were lovers of the most intimate sort. He discovers a hundred things, each more disturbing than the last: her grotesque relationship with her brothers, her plans for the future of Geneco. How much he would hate to be poor Blind Mag. He watches her now: when she approaches him, when she talks, when she leaves. When she comes. The look in his eyes is dark and narrow, and he couldn't be more fascinated or more disgusted if she suddenly pulled off her own skin and started eating it. He's repelled, and ensorcelled, and more than anything, he's _sick of it. _

And then one day, in the cemetery, there's a girl. And it's like she's waiting for him: wide, solemn dark eyes; long, solemn dark hair. She looks weak, and in need of help, and Dawn had always said he'd had a reluctant soft spot for kids. But even while he recognizes how vulnerable she is, something in him also recognizes something else, and it says, _savior. _Maybe not to the world—_or maybe—_but certainly for him, he thinks.

It's been a long time since he's helped anyone, and at first it scares him a little, though he doesn't let it show. But then—something in her wide gaze, dark and solemn and scared, and though he's teasing her, pricking her fear, he can't help but think—

She's the quiet moon to Dawn's sunlight, but she's _real_—he can see it in her eyes, underneath the wig, something of an innocence, which is unheard of in this place; something in the cream-colored lace of her blouse, the frantic and fluttering hands. She's an _out, _she's an _escape, _and he thinks if he can just give her the nudge she needs, here or there, she can be the _finale._

And he thinks maybe, at last, the song is drawing to a close.

**xxxxx**

**Dawn's Adagio (Reprise)**

_In the dark blue light of the streetlamps, flickering in through the window, her hair still glowed with its own honey-colored light. His smile moved slowly, as was his habit, but the mockery was directed at himself now: who would have thought that seductive, sensual Dealer, with his cynical sly smile, would be panting after the skirt of a yellow-haired girl. _

_She sat on the edge of the window, one slender leg limned in light, the other foot propped on the shabby amp at her feet. Every toenail was a different color: cobalt and crimson and cotton-candy pink, joy she carried with her under her combat boots. She cradled an electric guitar in her arms, and it keened into the night. _

_He stretched against her sheets, his dark hair spilling over her pillows. It was a luxury—the scent of her all around him, clean and bright; the places where the bed was still warm with her. He grinned, again: he couldn't remember ever having been so deeply satisfied. Unless it had been a week ago, when he'd had her in an alley behind the pub. Or a few days before that, in his own bed. Or the very first time, in the bathtub at his place, with muffins and a tree-branch full of oranges on the table. She wasn't his most experienced partner, or his most seductive—but the feel of her, her laughter, the warmth of skin that had never seen a scalpel, the joyful and unrestrained enthusiasm—_

_So fearless. Alive in ways that most people, who were terrified of age and illness and ugliness—alive in ways they would _never _comprehend. He began to think he'd been screwing corpses all along._

_The guitar wailed. He watched. As the night unfolded around them, and the sounds of her playing shivered in the air, he wondered. He'd been lured into her bed—not that he ever turned down a warm bed, a warm body—by her smile, the rare light in her eyes, the novelty of real skin. And suddenly a thought pricked him, a mad desire: he wanted more. In a world where all he'd ever seen was the surface, he wanted what was underneath._

_And where to start?_

"_Why the opera?" he asked at last._

_She looked up, eyes startled in the darkness, and then smiled. It was nothing like his. It was like the rising sun._

"_All of life," she said quietly, whimsically, "is an opera." She struck a chord; the guitar sang out mournfully into the dark blue air._

_He rolled onto his side, long hair sliding over his bare tattooed shoulder. He gleamed in the light: pale, blue, cold. "That's a bit discouraging," he said, amused. "Aren't operas usually tragedies?"_

_She looked at him evenly, and his heart tripped in his chest. In that moment, he thought he could start to love her._

"_Well then," she said only, and when she smiled it was so sweet that the skin behind his eyes tightened in the unfamiliar notion of tears. He blinked them back, stunned at his own visceral reaction, at the sudden foreign neediness and fear that rose within him. "Well then," she repeated. "You know how this is going to end."_

**Fermata.**

**xxxxx**

**Author's Note:**

**The first time I saw Repo!, **_**Zydrate Anatomy **_**captivated me. Reading other fanfiction, it seems to me that most people regard this number as indicative of a romance between Amber Sweet and the man they call Graverobber. If not romance, then at least desire. Yet for me, when I watched it, all I saw was contempt. Lust, perhaps, a little—but mostly contempt. Sticky, sardonic, darkly twisted contempt. The whole number seemed, to me, a powerplay.**

**And so Da Capo al Coda was born. **

**This was a piece written on a whim. I'm still not entirely happy with it, so changes could still happen in the future. For a while I tried to polish it, to make it into something more eloquent and professional, but it has resisted admirably, until my head has become so full of it that I can't see which end is up, even when I've deliberately avoided it for a week to try to purge my mind of confusion. So…if it sucks, um, too bad. Haha. The storymonsters do what they want.**

**I'm not sure if there is any part of this piece that is perhaps unclear. It all makes sense to me, but I'm the writer! I can see behind the stage, and sometimes take for granted what the audience does or doesn't know. If you have a question, please ask. Structurally, this piece is set up in a series of flashbacks from two interwoven patches of time. The "main" timeline is the one that begins in the moments or perhaps days following Dawn's death and leads up to the moment Shilo is joined by Graverobber in the cemetery. The secondary timeline begins when Graverobber ("Dealer," here) first meets Dawn, and ends at her death (excluding the reprise). **

**The whole piece is a play on music.**

**Da Capo al Coda (DC al Coda)** refers to a technique at the end of a piece, when the musician returns to the beginning. This happens twice here: we end at Repo and then begin at Dawn's Death, moving up until Repo begins; we end at Dawn's death and start at their first meeting. Each section is entitled like a score; some are more traditional and classically operatic, and for some I tried to mimic the style of the chapters/pieces in Repo itself.

Usually an opera begins with an **overture**; for the purposes of this fanfiction our overture is the second section, after a brief interlude, largely because I like the play on words for "overture" (this is the section where Dealer makes her first advance on Dawn).

A "**nocturne**" is a piece of music meant to be about or evocative of the night.

The term "**adagio**" refers expressly to tempo; that is, to play a composition "slowly and gracefully," but is also often used as an identifying noun when referring to a piece.

"**Verismo**" literally means "truth." Here it functions as the revelation, but in opera it refers to a construct of the 19th Century in which ordinary events and characters were displayed in melodramatic situations. The term melodrama has so much negative baggage attached to it, but I still thought it was fitting.

Finally: I thought about closing this section with a finale, or something similar, to properly end the tale according to operatic standards. But…I wanted the idea of it to stick with readers, for them to hold onto it and take it with them when they left. And after all, as we know from Repo!, it isn't _really _over.

Hence the **fermata**, which literally means to hold a certain note indefinitely, until the conductor says otherwise. Here, I thought of it as a sort of long embrace: of the story, of the characters, of their inevitable and impending tragedy.

You'll hold onto it, I hope.


End file.
